Minimum wage, homelessness and latch key kids

Good paying jobs are hard to find and, therefore, it's no wonder the homeless population continues to grow!

In this opinion published in the Reno Nevada Gazette Journal, a full time employee must earn at least $21+ per hour to be able to afford paying for a place to live. This echo letter to the editor describes the situation from the writer's personal experience, by Valerie Truce*:

US workers need living wages, not a social safety net: Truce

To rent a 2-bedroom home, on average, you would need to earn $21.21 per hour as a full-time worker in the United States. Depending on the location, the hourly wages required for housing range from $9.68 (in Puerto Rico) to $35.20 (in Hawaii), for people working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year. Wochit

In 1968 I became an emancipated-minor a few days before I graduated from high school. Within days I went to work for Pacific Bell, making minimum wage. My job afforded me a studio apartment. I had sick leave, health care, a pension and worked 40 hours a week. I accrued a week of vacation time a year. I even managed to save from every paycheck. I needed no safety net.

Today a high school diploma will still get one a minimum wage job, but not a living wage, no health care and no ability to save for a rainy day. In the wealthiest country on earth, we have enabled a new slave class, the working poor, dependent on the government to survive.

In 1968 our country believed a minimum wage should be a living wage. We hadn’t developed into a place where CEOs profit at the expense of fair wages for their workers. For example, a typical Mc Donald’s employee makes minimum wage, $7.25 an hour. Steve Easterbrook, the CEO of McDonald’s, was paid $21.8 million last year — a raise of $6.4 million, or 42 percent over his 2016 pay. Forty-two percent! If a McDonald’s employee receives an increase it’s generally 5 percent, about $2 a week.

Minimum wage is not only a hardship on the worker, but our social services as well. If workers made a living wage, they wouldn’t qualify for social safety nets, like Food Stamps, Medicaid and income assistance, "Welfare".

When I read that the Nevada Governor Sandoval vetoed an increase in minimum wage from $7.25 to $12, I was dismayed. Once again we have marginalized the needs of the working poor. 

Why do we prefer to honor the outlandish desires of CEOs and their corporations, the true welfare queens? It’s to our own detriment.

Maintaining the current minimum wage exacerbates the enormous social issues. Many work two or three jobs to make ends meet — too many hours to be home with their families. We now have a subculture of latchkey children, and children who are institutionalized in schools and after-school programs for as much as 11 hours a day. These children often don’t benefit from family outings, have no idea nature is just a few miles away, and, ironically, McDonald’s is their go-to for a meal. For them there is no vision of what the world offers. Our country is not only creating poverty, but failing those impacted by poverty.

It maybe argued this is how a capitalist society works, but other developed nations haven’t allowed such a huge divide between classes to be created. Come November I will vote for a person who realizes how important it is to increase the minimum wage to a living wage. I will vote for someone who appreciates the cold-hearted disparity between the top 1 percent and the less fortunate.

I am not a socialist. I am a citizen who realizes with a bit of American ingenuity we can fix this disgrace.

*Valerie Truce, M.Ed., is a Reno resident.